


Braid

by LadyNighteyes



Category: Radiant Historia
Genre: (yes this was a hard one to tag), Brainwashing Sequelae, Gen, Mirrored from Tumblr, Platonic Hair Care, Spoilers by Implication
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-07
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-09-13 07:31:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16888263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyNighteyes/pseuds/LadyNighteyes
Summary: Raynie really,reallydoesn't understand Stocke, and she's not sure she ever will.





	Braid

_This would be much easier_ , Raynie thought, _if I could use both my hands_.

That bear they’d fought earlier had a lot to answer for.

She pulled a segment of her hair over her shoulder, willing it to stay out of the way while she crossed the other two. It immediately, traitorously, slid back. Raynie swore under her breath as she tried to separate it out again without losing the others.

It was very, very tempting to try taking the splints off her right hand; it had been a few hours, so the magic should have healed the broken bones enough by now to move her fingers again. Unfortunately, she knew better. Last time she’d taken a splint off before Marco had told her it was safe, her arm had gotten misaligned and he’d had to break it all over again to set it back in the right place. She’d had to spend twice as long with the splint in the end, it had hurt like crazy, and Marco had been holding it over her head ever since.

Didn’t make trying to braid one-handed any less frustrating, though. Maybe she should just leave her hair loose? It’d be an unmanageable mess in the morning, especially with how the grime got into everything here in Abyssia, but-

“Would you like some help?” said a voice behind her.

Raynie turned, giving up and dropping her hair. She’d made so little progress that it unraveled completely. “Stocke? I thought you were putting up the tent.”

“We finished just now,” he said. Raynie had no idea how he managed to stay so _clean_ when they’d been out in the wilderness for so long. When she’d last seen him, he’d been smeared with blood from finishing off the bear; how had he found the time to change clothes? “Do you need a hand?”

“Sure, if you’re offering,” she said. “I’m trying to get my hair braided for bed. I think I might be able to get it if you hold part of it for me.”

“Won’t it be faster if I do it myself?”

Raynie blinked. Well, that was Stocke for you, she supposed. “I guess. Do you want me to tell you how?”

“Don’t worry. I’ll manage.” Raynie reflected that Stocke was very good at indicating that you’d just said something very funny, for a man she didn’t think she’d ever heard laugh.

He knelt down behind where she was sitting, and Raynie turned back to look straight ahead.

She wished she could see his hands, she thought as he worked. He was quick about it and didn’t pull, but whatever he was doing, it wasn’t the simple braid she’d been trying for.

Oh well, it wasn’t as if he could do much worse than she’d been doing.

“Do you have a hair tie?” he asked, much sooner than she’d expected.

Wordlessly, she handed him a ribbon over her shoulder. He took it.

A few seconds later, Stocke sat back and said, “There. That should hold.”

“What did you-” She touched her hair, gingerly.

“Halo braid,” he said. “It seemed the simplest thing to keep it out of your way.”

He’d done it _well_ , too- nothing pulled, and the braid felt even for the entire length it looped around her head. She’d told Marco once that there was nothing Stocke could turn out to know that would surprise her anymore; it seemed she’d been wrong about that. “Simple? I wouldn’t have known how to do this, Stocke, and I’ve been braiding my hair every night for years!”

He shrugged. “It’s a standard braid. You just add more hair to the top strand as you go around, then tuck in the end when you finish the circle.”

“I guess that _is_ pretty simple,” Raynie admitted. “But seriously, where did you learn to do that? You have to have had a lot of practice to be that fast at it.”

“It’s…” He trailed off, a strange look on his face.

“Did you use to keep your hair long or something? I have trouble imagining that.”

He didn’t seem to notice the teasing. “No. Shorter, actually.” He was frowning slightly to himself, his eyes no longer focused on her.

“Do you have a sister, then? Or did you help your mom, or…?” As far as she could remember, he’d never said a word about his family the entire time she’d known him. Well, not that she couldn’t sympathize with that.

“The only other surviving member of my family was my father,” he said. His voice was… blank. Distant, rote and emotionless, as if he was reading the words off some internal cue card. Then he shook his head, and life seemed to come back into his eyes.

“Are you okay? Sorry, I didn’t mean to ask…” Wild-eyed panic wasn’t really a look Stocke _did_ , as far as she knew, but his expression right now was close enough to scare her.

“I… I’m fine, I…” It would have been hard to believe even if Raynie hadn’t once heard him say the same thing after being sliced from shoulder to hip by a Hell Spider.

“I- I mean, you don’t have to tell me if it’s a bad memory, or something,” she added hastily. “I was just curious, ‘cause I was surprised- Stocke, are you sure you’re okay? You don’t look so good.”

He’d put a hand to his face, and his eyes were wide and unfocused. He blinked when she said his name, and shook his head again. “No, it’s… it’s not… I can’t…” He blinked again, then gave her a false, forced smile. “You’re probably right. Maybe I’m coming down with something.”

He stood up, moving quick and agitated. “I’m going to go get something to drink. Let me know if you need help getting your hair back down in the morning.”

“Thanks!” Raynie called after him, as he headed back towards the tent. She got up as well; might as well see what Marc had managed to make for dinner.

What had that been about?

_Oh well_ , she thought. _At least my hair’s out of the way_.


End file.
